Building A Company Culture That Drives Success With Brent Beene
What truly sets high-performing companies apart? According to Corient Private Wealth Partner Brent Beene, the answer lies in an intentional, well-defined corporate culture.
In this episode of Open For Business, Brent joins hosts Stuart Brown and Norman Kallen to unpack how leaders can build and sustain a culture that fuels engagement, resilience, and long-term success — especially in an era shaped by remote work, generational shifts, escalating M&A activity, and post-COVID workforce expectations.
Brent shares practical insights on defining culture with purpose, leveraging employee feedback to strengthen trust and performance, and treating culture as a strategic asset — one that can serve as an “insurance policy” during times of disruption. The conversation also explores how to integrate cultures during mergers and acquisitions, balance tradition with innovation, and scale a company without losing its identity.
Key topics include:
- How to define a company culture that drives engagement and results
- Building strong culture across remote and hybrid teams
- Using employee feedback as a tool for continuous improvement
- Why culture is a strategic risk-management and retention tool
- Successfully merging cultures in M&A transactions
- The multi-generational lens on workplace values and expectations
- How the COVID crisis reshaped corporate culture — and what leaders must do now
- Preserving culture while accelerating growth and expansion
Whether you’re leading a fast-growing company, navigating change, or rethinking your organization’s identity, this episode delivers actionable insights on building a culture that not only supports success – but drives it.
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Building A Company Culture That Drives Success With Brent Beene
I’d like to welcome our guest, Brent Beene. Brent is the Managing Partner of the New York and New Jersey offices of Corient. Brent, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me, Norm.
Good to have you. Again, introduction to my partner, Stewart. Stewart, Brent Beene, you haven’t met before.
Brent, pleasure to speak with you.
Great to speak with you too, Stewart.
Looking Back To Brent’s Career Journey
Brent, why don’t you give us a little background? Where did you come from and what organization? How’d you get to the position you’re at? The conversation is about culture and how culture drives a firm both on engagement and on revenue. Where’d you start? What was your journey? How’d you get to where you are? We’ll go beyond that with other questions.
Make sure you start in first grade, because that’s clearly the important grade that begins your journey.
My journey actually started, I grew up in West Texas and went to school at Texas Tech University. The only reason that I think that’s important maybe for the audience is just my family was a fifth-generation farming and ranching. There was a work ethic that I think intertwined into the way that I thought about our family business that’s transcended the way I think about culture.
From Texas Tech, I got an undergraduate degree and a Master’s degree. My Master’s degree was actually in Financial Planning. The interesting part about that is at the time, to get into the financial services business, you primarily came as a result of being in the insurance side of things or a stockbroker.
Texas Tech was one of the few places that actually had degrees. In fact, it was the first PhD in Financial Planning. If you’ve ever met someone who has a degree in Financial Planning, chances are that they were taught by someone who got their PhD from Texas Tech. There was a firm in New Jersey, Little Silver, New Jersey, to be exact, that hired seven of us from that program over about a five-year period in the early 2000s.
It was called Wealth Builders. I was at Wealth Builders for about just shy of four years. Unbelievable experience. Something that will resonate with you and Stewart and Norm is the gentleman who brought us up and owned the firm really thought about this process much more like a law firm. That wasn’t dialing numbers and knocking on doors, but rather let’s teach you the business, let’s integrate you with clients, let’s transition them to you over time and from there you’ll get referrals and work with their centers of influence, etc. The person was quite forward-thinking.
We pivoted to becoming more of a third-party money manager there at the end of my tenure, and my background was in the financial planning area. Obviously, estate planning, income tax, retirement, etc., investments. Everyone thinks it’s synonymous with being a financial advisor, but what I really loved was all of the comprehensive planning. We agreed that it was probably time for me to look elsewhere.
I was introduced to the gentleman at some founding partners at Region Atlantic Capital. As soon as I met them I thought, “This is exactly where I should be.” I came in from a career path perspective with about four years of experience and we were growing rapidly at the time. Frankly, it was good timing and it was the perfect fit. Within pretty short order, I moved up from what was called a team manager to a wealth advisor and then became partner.
I joined the management committee at 28 years old. We ran the firm as a four-person management committee. It felt very fortunate to learn for all these years from that perspective. I later became the chairman of the board of directors prior to our acquisition by Corient. Within Corient, I became what’s called the Managing Partner, soon to become a Regional Managing Partner, which will oversee some other geographies across the country. That’s my story to this point.
How does your journey intersect with the concept of culture as a significant part of your business interests?
I think that having grown up where I grew up and then moving to the Northeast right out of school, I recognized that the culture of hard work was really important. As I got more integrated into the hiring all the way from internship programs to the hiring process, to the marketing within the firm, that was really fortunate because when I joined Region, we were about 20 people and maybe managed $1 billion.
You could wear a lot of hats. I had a lot of exposure to a lot of different areas and what I kept finding, Stewart, was that the people who really enjoyed what they were doing, and I don’t mean just it was a fun place to work, but really worked hard and thought about clients first and helping each other in collaboration, that was going to be the key to our success going forward. The folks who founded Region Atlantic had done an amazing job, but you could just see this opportunity to really excel if we focused on the culture and I think at every turn I realized just how important that was.
What does culture mean to you?
Before you jump into that quickly, how did you get people at the firm who preceded you to the firm buy into that?
It wasn’t as if everyone was on the same page. I’m sure that isn’t a surprise. When I think about specifically the 4 founders, 1 in particular, maybe 2, were 100% on board. The other two were more skeptical and felt like it was a little warm and fuzzy and didn’t really make much difference. I was fortunate enough to get the latitude to start running what I call culture sessions.
We would have breakouts with folks talking about what we were doing, what was important to them and I think the real key was that I helped them understand that they were the culture. Yes, at the top you can dictate here’s values, etc., but the that each of you make up the culture and how you act is part of that. Within short order, I think we started to see the results and it became a more attractive place to not only work but to retain and attract new folks. We had a lot of luck hiring great talent. I think they saw that as part of this was an attractive place to work, that we were being intentional about it.
How To Define Culture And Measure Cultural Success
How do you define culture?
I think it’s a vernacular that people are intentional about where they work and how they treat each other and a set of behaviors in which they think about how they want to be treated and how we’re going to be successful. I think collectively, culture becomes the amalgamation of all of those factors.
How do you measure cultural success? Revenue success is an easier indicator. How do you measure cultural success other than looking at revenue?
I think two ways that we started to look at it, Norm, was from a retention perspective. Were we losing people that we didn’t want to lose and were we attracting people that we wanted to attract? It was pretty easy to say as long as we were doing a good job on the other end on the recruiting side. If a candidate was in front of us or an existing member of the team was with us that we really were pleased with, if they weren’t leaving and they were growing and contributing, we thought that was a cultural success as well as being able to attract some top talent that I don’t know that we had had that success previously. Those were two ways that were non-financial.
Attraction and retention play directly into culture from your perspective.
Correct.
If I was a stone-cold capitalist, which I am, and I say to you, “Brent, all that’s nice, but you can’t measure it. The only thing you can measure is how much am I paying somebody and how much are they getting in a bonus,” what do you say to that? As a wealth planner, no less.
Stewart, I think that is, more often than not, the corporate culture evaluates. It’s hard to argue the numbers. There are certain ways in which we created surveys over time about engagement and we just had to draw some correlation to engagement to the firm being more successful, attracting more clients, retaining more clients. Certainly, in our business because the people are taking care of the clients. If the people are happy, the clients are happy, rinse and repeat. Not upsetting the apple cart is I think more important specifically in this industry.
Did you struggle or how did you convince the people who were skeptical that this was a positive thing and this would help generate revenue? You can always look back and say look what it did but how do you convince them ahead of time? How do you those people who were just not on board or any leaders who are not on board, who really are looking at the bottom line and say, “It’s a job. Come on, people, it’s a job. I’m paying you good money, it’s a job?” How did you go about convincing those people this is a real value element?
I think in the beginning, Norm, it was really pushing on the fact like what could this hurt if I try this? They became supportive of me trying and it doesn’t work or you point to the fact that this is a waste of everyone’s time and you certainly could add up the hours that were spent on it and put some numerical value. Doesn’t look like a good ROI.
I honestly can’t remember whether it was six months to a year of a pilot, but I said then we’ll stop. What’s it going to hurt? They bought in and then over time they started to see it, particularly as we were having sessions as an organization all together and sharing. I think it started to become evident and then you started to see it in the numbers.
Breaking Down Exercises In Culture Sessions
Can you share, Brent, some of the exercises you did in these sessions or what you did in these sessions?
Absolutely. Obviously, they evolved over time. I think in the early stages, I don’t know whether either of you are familiar with Strategic Coach?
Sure.
Strategic Coach was something that I had done and I felt like there was some material there that was very valuable in the way we thought about this. One of those metaphors that I always remembered from Strategic Coach was the horizon, that you’re always walking to the horizon thinking that you’re going to get there, but you never do. Instead of being frustrated by the fact that you’re not going to get there, if you just turn around and you say to yourself, “Look how far I’ve come.”
In the early days, those were types of concepts we would talk about and relate it to development because we always felt like the better you were equipped and developed, not just technically on estate planning or income tax or investments, but personal growth, the better job you’re going to do for your clients.
The better you are equipped and developed, not just technically but also in personal growth, the better job you will deliver to your clients.
I think so much of this too in our world is psychology. Being self-aware became something that we talked a lot about and in not making excuses for things. Typically, if people don’t perform, I think human nature is to like make a bunch of excuses and we just started to hold people accountable to themselves more than anything. Those were the early days. What I realized is we would talk about a lot of content maybe in a two-hour period and then we would be done with it.
Next month, we’d be picking back up and there we weren’t reinforcing. We started doing it in four-month chunks where for four months we would be on one particular topic, subject, book, whatever it may be and we would keep reinforcing and have exercises. One that that Norman’s familiar with is The SPEED of Trust and Thanks for the Feedback.
Those were two books. The Speed of Trust was actually written by Stephen Covey’s son, who also had the name Stephen Covey. I tell you, what I really found valuable there and it speaks to your point, Stewart, about the cold-blooded capitalist is The Speed of Trust basically in just very short order described, if I trust my team or whoever I’m working with, I create a significant amount of efficiency. If I don’t, it’s very inefficient.
In our respective worlds, if I hand something off to someone and I know they’re going to do it and do it well, I don’t think about it again. If I have doubts then I’m double-checking their work, I’m following up to see if it’s done and all of that’s costly. Making sure that we trusted one another as a team, I think that book did a particularly good job.
Thanks for the Feedback was by the Harvard negotiation team. They also wrote Difficult Conversations, the same group. For twenty years, they were all at Harvard and they did all this research on how you deliver feedback and they taught techniques on the best way to do that. What dawned on them after about twenty years is like the person that you’re delivering it to actually has all the control, not the one that’s delivering.
You can deliver it in the very best manner with the most technical way to which you think is going to break through to someone, but at the end of the day, the person on the other end is either going to take it or not. In a nutshell we spent a lot of time talking about how do you pull that feedback out of people if you don’t understand. If you don’t like what you’re hearing, there’s got to be something that’s true and helpful. I think talking about all of those concepts were really helpful. Those are three examples.
Building Healthy Culture In The Age Of Remote Work
How do you blend that concept of what you’re trying to draw out of people and instill this culture in the world post-COVID, when you have a lot of remote employees? That’s been the discussion, Stewart, and I have had with clients, in our groups that we’ve been in, we’ve had it with you as well. It’s very difficult, particularly if you have an employee who’s starting with you, you talk about culture but they’re going to work remotely. How do you blend that so they understand it and they appreciate it and it has value in retaining in engaging them and in retaining them?
To your point, Norman, as we’ve talked about, it is extremely difficult. I’ve probably found that the most difficult in COVID because that physical interaction is so important to the culture. If you’re not around each other watching by example, it makes it harder. We still have sessions. Many times, we’ll ask people to come in for them. I think in the onboarding process you can that’s where you really have your best shot to get off on the right foot as it relates to culture.
In general, I think it’s enormously difficult. I’ll give you an example. I meet with every new employee, no matter what role they play. I always describe something that was important to us about making sure that you bring it up. Bring up something that you don’t think is working or you’re curious. You don’t come in saying, “Here’s how we did it here and here’s how we did it there,” but you’re really genuinely curious about, “Why do you do it this way?”
I always say because we don’t see it anymore. It becomes like that junk drawer that gets accumulating all these things and you don’t notice it until someone that you’re not expecting looks in there and then you’re embarrassed. I say, “Within the first six months, you’re going to see things that we just don’t see.”
It goes back to another Stephen Covey Senior metaphor, which is he talks about the ham. I don’t know if you guys have ever heard that, but he was engaged to his future bride and they’d been to Thanksgiving, I want to say once or twice and they were going again and the ham came out for Thanksgiving, I want to say once or twice and they were going again and the ham came out for Thanksgiving and both ends were cut off and he couldn’t understand, he’d been wondering for some time why both ends of the ham were cut off. He never asked.
This year, he decided to ask his wife, “Why are both ends of the ham cut off?” She looks at him perplexed, she’s like, “I didn’t really notice that. Mom, why are both ends of the ham cut off? I didn’t notice that. Grandma?” Grandmother’s like, “Silly, 60 years ago, the ovens weren’t big enough.” We just pass these things down without thinking about them. To all these new folks, I say, “You’re never going to know what the culture used to be like.” It’s all perspective. It’s really strong but it’s nothing like it used to be. I think we’ve just had to get used to it.
How Leaders Should Instill Culture In New Hires
This is interesting because a number of our readers are business owners. When you are recruiting, you specifically state that one of the obligations of a new employee would be to come in for these sessions, if you will?
Yes. Absolutely. I think too, Stewart, what I want to make sure that they understand is that their voice matters and I see this often in businesses where the leaders will say they want to hear but they really don’t. My opinion on that has always been if you really don’t then don’t say it. There’s nothing worse than somebody being vulnerable and giving you feedback and you’re not really interested.
Both Stewart and I have been in situations with employers who talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk, so to speak. You know exactly what’s happening as an employee.
It’s really very interesting. When you’re in these sessions, do you do it by seniority, do you do it by practice area? What do you do?
Over time, as we’ve grown, so our legacy business is now probably 85 people. It’s gotten more challenging. It used to when we were twenty, you could all be in a room together. As we grew, let’s just say we had a four-month session, we’d be very intentional about trying to not have a concentration of people on a client service team, a concentration of people in a particular position, people that were partners. A nice mix in each. Let’s say we have 4 groups of 20, just to be hypothetical, and maybe we would have more, depending on the subject, more groups.
We would really try to have a cross section and people that don’t necessarily work together with each other day in and day out, they’re learning more about their colleagues and we’re talking about things that that you wouldn’t talk about otherwise. I think it builds that cohesion. That’s typically how we’ve set it up.
What do you do when you’re in a situation where an employee either is skeptical themselves or where they’re having issues because the manager isn’t buying into the culture? How have you addressed those situations? I’m curious.
I’ll be honest, we’ve had very little of those situations. I appreciate that. I don’t know exactly why but I think when you really create the culture that like this is the way it’s going to be, and you’re attracting people that are attracted to that, you just don’t tend to run into those issues and we’ve definitely made bad hires. If you’ve got a really strong culture, it doesn’t take long at all to realize this isn’t going to work. I think both sides realize it too fairly early on.
I’ve read statistics that basically say that the average American worker is 40% efficient. Do you think that your program or programs increase the efficiency of the employees?
I really do, Stewart. I think what we’re trying to do is teach people to be or accentuate their ability to be self-aware and to be self-accountable and that we’re not going to micromanage you, you owe this to the team, and there’s a very much a pay it forward part of the culture that it was done for you and you’ve got to do it for the next person. It hopefully eliminates a lot of inefficiency and a lot of slacking because you feel personally like you’re letting folks down if you’re not doing your job.
I think we’ve discussed this before, the issue of self-awareness and the importance on leadership, how it’s impactful to your employees. You’re saying as well at each level, at the lower level, at each level an employee has to be, in addition to be to feel like they’re accountable to themselves, self-aware of how their behavior impacts everyone else.
That’s exactly right. I think that feedback component we talked about earlier is really helpful because if you get someone who’s really self-aware and really wanting to be better, when you give them difficult feedback, they’re grasping for it. “I really do want to improve,” versus we all know how those people that just get defensive. I think if you don’t have the self-awareness and the self-accountability, it’s really hard to hear those things.
If you do not have self-awareness and self-accountability, it is hard to accept constructive feedback.
I’m just curious. You have an employee in one of these sessions or you have a manager and either you’ve gotten feedback from others around them, you’ve seen their behavior, how have you then addressed the issue with that particular manager or employee to make sure that they’re understanding they’re not fitting the model you want to create?
I think the first thing, Norm, is to do it head on and to do it with compassion. This is a personal story. I really used to struggle with being wanting to be liked. It took me a while to get the that point of I think from an emotionally mature perspective, wanting to be liked, sometimes I would sugarcoat things. Whether it was all the information that I’d consumed or what it may be, but I had an epiphany where I’m really not helping someone if I’m not just being honest with them.
I’m coming from a genuine place of I really want to help you and I want our organization to be better. I think when I realized that, it became easy and I got better at it. When I have those conversations, I really genuinely think people know that I’m coming from a good place and not ever trying to tear someone down, it’s just this isn’t the standard we expect.
What Culture Looks Like At Corient
We’ve been talking a lot about culture. What is the culture like at Corient? How would you describe it?
The interesting part about what we’re building, Stewart, is Corient, by way of background, there wasn’t even a business in the US wealth management space several years ago. It’s been an amalgamation of about 40 firms at this point. Each of those firms had their own culture. I think what the executive team has done an exceptionally good job of is identifying those teams or firms that felt very strongly about their people and their clients the way that everyone else did, even if they executed differently.
This collaborative nature stems from those two things and we’re building something that really isn’t in the marketplace which is like an independent boutique RIA, which each of our firms were relative to joining Corient, but on a national level with scale. What made us great, typically we were we were selling against the large financial institutions.
I always said when we were talking to folks about doing something transaction wise that our people and our clients didn’t want to work with a large firm. That’s why they chose us. I’m sure there’s a spectrum but in general, but if we can build a large firm that feels like a boutique RIA, which is how we’ve all done business, like, “We could really win the game,” I think we’ve done that. However, integration still continues and will go on for some time, but the progress back to the horizon metaphor is when I look at how far we’ve come, it’s quite amazing.
I think the hallmark of what we built is you’re not competing with anyone at Corient, which is what you see in most of these large organizations. You might be under the same umbrella or the same roof, but my team isn’t going to go help another team because we’re competitors. Within Corient, now we have all of these expertise and different skillsets from all over the country and if we need to bring them in they’re happy to do it because we’ve created a structure where it’s all about collaboration.
When you’re looking to make an acquisition, one of the questions we Stewart and I talked about was, and it’s very difficult because Stewart and I are both M&A lawyers, at what stage do you integrate or do you have that conversation with a target an acquisition target to make sure the fit is right, to make sure they understand who Corient is? What’s their culture like and what changes do they have to make potentially?
I think where we’ve had good luck, Norman, is interviewing folks outside of leadership team. Getting them to open up about what’s great about this place, why have you been here, what do you think you do that’s exceptionally good for clients that maybe other firms don’t? You really start to see the fabric. We’re looking for is this a place that’s collaborative and wanting to get even better for the clients. We’re also looking for firms that are growing organically.
In that first meeting that I mentioned earlier with every new employee, I also say, “If we’re not growing, then you’re not going to stay. If you do stay, then maybe you really weren’t the best.” It’s a real opportunity. In those conversations, we’re trying to uncover are they going to be a good fit, are they going to be accretive to the business and are they going to be collaborative?
It’s interesting, have you ever been brought in by one of your clients who may be selling a business to say, “Take a look at this buyer and let me know whether or not you believe the culture of the buyer is going to be beneficial for my employees?”
The answer is no, I have not. I talk to business owners a lot about this. The way we kicked off the conversation, I find that that not everyone or very few people may buy into how important that is. I think what I’ve seen from a prospective client who’s looking to sell or acquire, they get hyper focused on the numbers and less focused on how’s this going to look culturally?
We’ve been in situations whether it’s law firms we know about or certainly businesses where the cultures are completely different. At the end of the day, notwithstanding, they consummate the deal, either the deal down the road blows up, people leave. We’ve had law firms split apart because, again, there were different cultures and to Stewart’s point, they didn’t focus on that element of it during the transaction. They didn’t think that was as relevant as it really is, so people get along.
Managing A Team Composed Of Different Generations
Let me shift gears for a second. We talked about this once before in a private conversation. On the different generations, this is always a tough one. You have all these generation Z, Y, X, whatever. Everybody has a different philosophy, perspective on what culture should be, what makes them happy, what motivates them. As a person in your position, how do you manage that? How do you address that when someone has a whole different perspective each and every time on what works for them and why they want to be there?
I think we’ve made mistakes there where we’ve gotten too focused on specifically what makes someone happy, especially if they’re a large contributor and that means a lot of different things. I believe over time, we started to recognize there’s some core fundamental foundational things about culture. Do I trust you? Do I believe that you have my best interest at heart? Are you doing the right thing for clients? Are you self-sacrificing are you all about you?
Those concepts, we try to focus more on that are fundamental and not unique to each culture. Where we’ve gotten astray, and I think this is an easy one to talk about, as the younger generations have come through and you look at the Googles of the world who offer free lunches and all kinds of activities and things like that, we’ve tried to be progressive there, but there was a time where it just got I think so far out of hand. We looked back and we’re like half of this is really not necessary, we just maybe got sucked into it.
Do you see differences per se in the perspective of younger people versus older, more mature employees with respect to culture?
Absolutely. I think particularly post-COVID, Stewart, the majority of it seems to revolve my experience around work-life balance, for lack of a better term. Having the autonomy as to when to come in, when to work, I think is very different generationally than someone who’s more tenured who was in the office every day at the beginning of the day and left late. I think about that as an old farming community. You were really judged on if you got up at dawn and you worked until night you put in this hard day’s work. It’s hard to get that out of my head even, so yeah, that’s where I probably see it most prevalent.
It’s funny because when we collectively were younger, most people said or asked, “Do you work to live or live to work?” Now it’s this whole concept of work-life balance. Respectfully, I don’t know if there’s a difference between it, but I do know that people of our generation definitely have to take responsibility for the everybody gets a trophy generation.
Toward that end, are you seeing the younger generations buy into the concept of these meetings to develop culture, to maintain culture as opposed to the older generation who’s there, as you said, 7:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night, don’t bother me with this BS, I just want to do my job and get out of here and make a lot of money?
Yeah, I really am. It’s seems to be much more important to them to enjoy where they’re working versus it being a job. Back to your point on the trophy generation, development is key and we’ve really had to be you know quite intense on the career path to have more iterations where they’re getting promoted and it’s almost like an award along the way because they have to see progress. I think culture’s just a byproduct of these sessions are a byproduct of another way to develop and have a voice.
Is Happiness Synonymous With Culture?
We had a speaker on a few sessions ago talking about happiness. I’ll ask you, is happiness synonymous with culture or does one drive the other? They talked about the importance of happiness, personal happiness in your own space, personal and happiness at work. How do you either compare or contrast the two or, again, do they operate on parallel terms?
I don’t think they operate on parallel terms, but I think back to the point I was making earlier where you can get hyper-focused on what makes someone happy or what you think makes someone happy or what they think makes someone happy, in terms of your offering at your as an employer. That really has a diminishing return. There should be, I think, just a baseline, “Here’s what we care about and here’s what we think is important and we’re good.”
We don’t need to keep adding additional perks and benefits onto that, which I think a lot of people attribute happiness to. If you bought this or we did that, then I’ll be even happier. My experience has been that once that then that becomes the standard and now you want something else and it where does it stop?
I guess it’s what’s the next best thing for me. Yeah, like the way I think about it to that point, Norm, is when you hear all of this, “Let’s go to four-day work weeks.” How many years is it going to be until we go to three-day work weeks? Everything’s relative.
How Leaders Should Balance Profitability And A Thriving Culture
Stewart, unless you have another question, I was going to ask you on closing here, a piece of advice to give to leaders. You’ve installed this in your organization, you’ve installed it, you’ve instilled it. A piece of advice to give to leaders on how to balance profitability and a thriving culture. What would that be?
I think stepping back and looking at what drives profitability, in terms of your employees, and what I mean by that is you know if it’s a manufacturing business and obviously creating more product is an easy equation. If it’s less tangible, what is really driving productivity as a result of your people? How can you have them own that and talk about it in a way that feels collaborative and then they feel responsible to themselves and also to the team?
Leaders must learn how to step back and examine what drives profitability within their team.
I just think you get a lot more activity, productivity going forward. It’s where does that intersection come between how we’re thinking about what we do for clients or end users or consumers, and how do we enhance the people that are actually making those products or providing the advice, whatever it may be.
Brent, to be clear, it’s not a function of stocking up on little plastic trophies and handing them out every quarter or so, right?
That’s exactly right.
How Culture Will Become Part Of The Entire Business Fabric
Let me ask you one final question that just popped into my mind. How do you envision 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now culture being part of the business rubric, the business fabric in the United States? It seems like it’s growing to me.
I absolutely agree with that, Stewart. Norman and I were speaking about this. There’s a gentleman in the audience may appreciate it. There’s an author named Patrick Lencioni and he’s written these business books that are in fable form, and he’s gotten a lot of attention over the last 10 or 15 or 20 years with some of the largest organizations.
Those that are pretty synonymous with culture like a Southwest Airlines or a Chick-fil-A or a Alan Mulally when he moved over to Ford. I think the more mainstream it becomes and people start to see the result, I think that next generation that we talked about is going to demand it because they’re just not going to stay. I think they’re going to potentially chase things. It’s going to be a huge part going forward or continuing to become a bigger piece of the pie.
Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words
Very interesting. Brent, we appreciate it. Thank you for joining us. You reminded us that culture isn’t just about making employees feel good, it’s really a driver of growth, resilience, long-term success, call it what you will. Balancing profitability and purpose, as you mentioned, is never easy, but as we heard, the companies that get it right build not only stronger bottom lines but also better workplaces.
Thank you again, Brent, and to our audience, if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with a leader who’s trying to balance culture with business growth. Until next time, remember, and this is our catchy phrase of the day, strong culture drives strong results. Thanks again, Brent.
Thank you both so much.
Brent, we also like to ask a final question before you go. Particularly as a Texas man, I know you probably hang around with Johnny Manziel from time to time. I saw at the bars. Bourbon or whiskey? Bourbon or Scotch?
Scotch.
All right, Stewart, he’s yours.
I just have this impression that Scotch is more sophisticated.
It clearly is. There’s no doubt about it.
All right, I’m out. I have tried every which way to try Scotch and I just can’t. I have lined them up, I’ve tasted them, I’ve done everything I can. As my wife likes to say, it not only smells like a cleaning fluid, it tastes like cleaning fluid. One of those things.
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About Brent Beene
Brent Beene is a Partner, Wealth Advisor who splits his time between Corient’s New York City and Morristown, NJ offices. In 2005, Brent joined legacy firm RegentAtlantic, where he was a Wealth Advisor and served as Chairman of the firm’s Board of Directors. He has a particular focus on the unique planning and investment needs of business owners. Brent is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® certificant and holds a BBA in Finance and an MS in Personal Financial Planning and Business Administration from Texas Tech University. He has been quoted in numerous financial publications, spoken at multiple venues and served in leadership roles in the Financial Planning Association® (FPA®).
